Quick Hits: Harper, Storen, Mets, Moore

It was on this day in 1953 that the Dodgers promoted their Triple-A manager to take over the Major League job on a one-year contract. Walter Alston remained in the Dodgers' dugout for the next 23 years, winning 2,040 games and leading the club to four World Series titles.

Drew Storen will only become more valuable to the Nationals as the price of closers continues to rise, opines Ben Goessling of MASNsports.com, though "there's a logical argument to be made for moving Storen at the height of his value."

The Mets are "still in [the] exploratory stage" of their offseason moves and "aren't close on anything," reports Andy Martino of the New York Daily News (via Twitter).

Royals general manager Dayton Moore tells Bob Dutton of the Kansas City Star that he doesn't think his team will be negatively affected by the new CBA. Dutton notes that the Royals spent much more than usual on draft signings and international prospects in the last year since the club was anticipating both avenues to be limited under baseball's new labor rules.

That would be nice but I am guessing it won’t happen. With his value going up I would think the cost for him will be too much for the Twins. Plus with the holes the Twins have right now I think there are more urgent things to fix.

Let’s let Kimbrel prove himself before he’s anointed savior of the bullpen in the years to come. He still has to recovery from shoulder surgery first, not to mention remain on the roster (consider in the past two weeks he’s gone Washington to Toronto then back to Washington via waiver claims). In time he could prove to be what some expect, and at that point in time the team can address “which reliever to trade” questions.